Three major trends currently occurs in telecommunication, i.e. 1) increasing amount of data traffic, 2) real-time communication goes from circuit switching to packet switching, and 3) new focus of real-time in packet switching, for example video and multimedia. The ever increasing amount of data traffic as well as real-time communication in packet switched networks has lead to a demand for monitoring of this data traffic with the same level of security and confidentiality as known from circuit switched networks monitoring.
One kind of monitoring is lawful interception, i.e. the act of intercepting a communication on behalf of a Law Enforcement Agency. Interception of Content of Communication CC i.e. speech and data is known. Interception of Intercept Related Information IRI is also known. Intercept Related Information is defined as signaling information related to target subscribers, for example call establishment. As an example, in Circuit Switching domain, the sending of IRI to a monitoring function is triggered by the following call-related and non-call related events:                Call Establishment        Answer        Supplementary Service        Handover        Release        SMS        Location Update        Subscriber Controlled Input        
Appropriate session related and session unrelated events trigger the sending of IRI to a monitoring function in case of Packet Switching communication.
Beyond the demand for monitoring of IRI and CC, demand for monitoring of IRI regarding location-based services is desired. The existing standardized location based services architecture can be found in the 3GPP specifications TS 23.271. According to the related Standard, a Gateway Mobile Location center GMLC is the first node external Location Services LCS client requiring information, accesses in a mobile network. The GMLC requests routing information, handles positioning requests and forwards location estimates to the Location Services client. Mobile positioning enables an operator to provide location-based services to his customer. Position procedures that can be used to obtain the location estimate are:                Mobile Terminating Location Request, which is requested by a specific request sent from a Location Services client external to the network via a Gateway Mobile Location Center        Mobile Originating Location Request, which is requested by the User Equipment        Network Induced Location Request, which is triggered in case the User Equipment is performing an emergency call.        
Location-based services are forecasted to soon be one of the most important sources of operator revenue. The position can be used to provide mobile subscribers with information and services that take advantage of the given geographical location. The location estimates can also be used for charging and billing.
According to current Lawful Interception standards, it is not possible to report, by means of existing Intercept Related Information events, the occurrence of traffic and information related to Location Services for a monitored subscriber/equipment. In order to monitor location-based services today, an agency should request the location based service provider with such detailed information, but a Lawful Interception Agency could be unaware of which providers are offering services to the target subscriber making it quite difficult to obtain such data from the telecommunication system.